Shoplifting

While stocks last

Thieves versus retailers

WHICH European country boasts the worst record for shoplifting? Step forward Britain, winner of this dubious honour for the second year running, according to a survey released on September 19th. Britons not only steal more than their continental counterparts, they are also less competent employees on the shop floor, resulting in Britain having the worst overall rate of retail “shrinkage”—a measure of losses by retailers from theft, mispricing and other wastage.

Continental Europeans are not much better. Shrinkage is increasing alarmingly in some countries and is generally on the rise. Consider staid Denmark. According to the survey, from the Centre for Retail Research at Nottingham University, shrinkage there is 9% up on last year. Danes remain relatively honest, but are fast closing on their neighbours.

Shrinkage costs the European economy a surprisingly large amount. Joshua Bamfield, who co-ordinated the study, puts the total annual cost at around euro30 billion ($29 billion) equivalent to a shocking euro80 per person in the region. That is more than the costs of the much-higher-profile car crime or domestic burglary. No directly equivalent American survey exists, but a recent poll among 30 of that country's top retailers found they lost an estimated $5 billion to shoplifting and employee theft in 2001, suggesting the problem there is on a similar scale.

Roughly half the losses in Europe come from theft by customers, who mostly home in on designer goods, electrical knick-knacks and, more bizarrely, vitamins and contraceptives. But almost euro8 billion of the theft is by companies' own staff, while suppliers manage to fiddle more than euro2 billion from retailers. Even so, it seems that some people still pay when they go shopping.